On how many of the following issues have you ever changed/modified your position?

I changed my position on capital punishment. I think the possibility of executing an innocent person should be reason enough to oppose the death penalty, although I have other reasons, too.

I think there are persuasive arguments for the death penalty, and I don't think it's immoral. I actually think it's ridiculous for a Christian to assert that it's immoral, because God instituted the death penalty in the Old Testament. And it applied to crimes besides murder, too, like adultery, blasphemy, idolatry, and rape.

The New Testament seems to reduce the number of capital offenses. I don't know what Jesus would say about capital punishment in our day and age, but he once prevented a woman who had committed adultery from being stoned. His main point didn't concern the validity of the death penalty, but the story still influences my thinking on the issue.

Regarding the other issues, I just wish that more people/politicians could debate them without misrepresenting opposing views, demonizing the opposition, and/or overstating their own case. Ultimately, we're on the same side.


"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

- Abraham Lincoln (Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865)